This invention relates to a device for feeding individual sheets to the platen of an office machine.
Various devices of this type are known to those skilled in the art and are customarily mounted on the top of the office machine engaging the latter by means of contact sections of its sidewalls and being positioned on the shaft of the platen of the office machine. The transport mechanism for the individual sheets, which are stacked in the sheet-feeding device, is driven by the platen of the office machine.
In order to transmit the rotary driving force of the platen, a gear, which is mounted on the contact section of the sidewall of the sheet-feeding device, engages a gear on the shaft of the platen. A drive train, incorporating gears mounted on the side sections, transfers the driving force to the transport mechanism of the sheet-feeding device.
In conventional sheet-feeding devices, the housing incorporating the right and left-hand sidewalls, which engage the shaft of the platen, is made of sheet metal. Since the platens of different office machines frequently differ in respect to their width from one another, it is customarily necessary that a sheet-feeding device be provided whose housing corresponds in width to the width of the platen of the office machine. In other words, a sheet-feeding device must be provided having a housing whose width between the sidewalls is the same as the width of the platen of the office machine with which it is to be utilized. This entails the manufacture and storage of numerous housings for sheet-feeding devices to accommodate the differences in width of various office machines.